Velocities of leader-strokes to lightning and spark discharges

✍ Scribed by T.E. Allibone

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1978
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 395 KB
• Volume: 306
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-0032(78)90062-5

✦ Synopsis

AESTRACT: Comparisons are made between the effective velocities of stepped leaderstrokes to lightning flashes and to laboratory-produced sparks. Evidence is given that the low leader velocities of sparks correspond to the low lightning leader velocities when lightning strikes from one charge-centre to another within a cloud or from a tethered rocket up to a thundercloud. Higher velocities occur when quite small "over-voltages" are applied to sparks and it is therefore suggested that the faster lightning leaders occur when an inter-charge stroke within the cloud is immediately succeeded by a stroke to ground.

As over-volted sparks behave differently from those generated at the minimum sparkover voltage, so lightning might be expected to strike differently depending upon the velocity of its leader-stroke.